The discovery of those biologic parameters contributing to the genesis and development of alcoholism is my major research objective. If it is possible to develop a rat model of alcoholism, its basis would be biological since no cultural or social factors need be involved. Excessive alcohol drinking by the rat, easy to produce, simulates, rather than models, the human condition, since it arises largely from caloric necessity. Desire for calories is not the raison d'etre of human drinking; it seems important to determine whether the central effect of alcohol can serve as a basis for the rat's decision to drink. If a central effect can be part of the mechanism which impels some rats to drink, then a forward step will have been taken. Several areas are to be explored: 1) the use of rats selectively bred for extremes of reactivity to an intoxicating dose of alcohol, with the aim of determining whether the two groups already bred also exhibit different patterns of self-selection of fluids or show other discrepant characteristics; 2) the possibility of associating pleasureable brain stimulation with the central effects of alcohol so as to effect a transference to alcohol ingestion as a rewarding stimulus; and 3) the attempt to make alcohol ingestion rewarding by giving to its ingestion medicinal characteristics, coupling its ingestion to recovery from illness. Our objective is to amplify any biological predisposition for alcohol addiction by choosing particular individuals, directly as a result of breeding or by chance, and to seek those modifications of the rat's environment which will make the central effects of alcohol the major referent for the rat.